The Annoyance Test

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. James 1:2,3

Head down, mind bent on the task at hand, and an interruption arrives. Grr, and thus begins the testing of your faith. It is not persecution or even scoffing, but it is the annoyance test and how often ya fail at it! Sometimes it does seem as if the Lord God has provided a particular person or several to specifically get on that side of you most likely to react with annoyance. It is a personality quirk, a mannerism, a habit learned from another region or nation, that seems to burrow under your skin of peaceful intent and disrupt all manner of inner workings leading to annoyance, and if you are not careful, an outburst of anger or even rage. It is not hard to imagine that someone has died from causing annoyance at some point in the story of us.

Why us though, have we not already believed in Jesus? Well, that is the point, dear believer! According to James, the trial that just walked in your door to cause that annoyance is a part of the fertilizer applied to the soil of the heart to grow the Spirit's fruit of patience in us.

Now go out there and be annoyed!

Bucky